Do you know where the world’s largest celebration of photography started?

Right here in the nation’s capital; the location from which World Photo Day now reaches over 500 million people globally.

In 2009, Korske, just 21-year old at the time, came up with the idea of World Photo Day in the bedroom of his family home.

“All my friends were away with family and I was in my bedroom thinking I need something to do, and so my passions for photography, storytelling and bringing communities together made me question whether there was a World Photo day,” he said.

“I typed it into Google and nothing came up, and that’s when World Photo Day was born. Little did I know back then that I’d be looking after a team of ten people to make it happen in just a few years’ time.”

Photo credit: Korske Ara

August 19th is World Photo Day, an unofficial international holiday celebrating the art and science of all things photography.

In a world with millions of pictures uploaded every minute, World Photo Day is inspiring thousands of photographers across the planet to share a single photo with a simple purpose: to share their world with the world.

Photo credit: Mark Hales – United Kingdom

Now 29, Korske says he has been developing World Photo Day for the last eight years with the support of Canberra’s innovation networks, including Entry-29, Cause a Stir and Innovation ACT (IACT).

“Last year we had a lot of support from start-up network Entry-29 and when we decided to move toward running our own events and integrating people into the team we went through a creative micro agent called Cause a Stir,” he said.

“We successfully pitched there and received a micro-grant which paid for our company registration and put us in touch with IACT.”

Korske recommends Canberra to all entrepreneurs.

“The best part of being in a co-working space is the support you get every day from other start-ups, the facilitators and the events they run.

“All of the like-minded people you meet in these spaces makes it easy to collaborate with different industries and skill sets.

Korske has big plans to push World Photo Day from Canberra to the rest of the nation and the globe.

“We’re looking at establishing partnerships to run exhibitions across different countries. We’d love to pick Australia’s best photos and see them celebrated in New Zealand, Japan and Singapore .

Photo credit: Manuel Veloso – Portugal

“Naturally there’s a lot of work that needs to go into that in terms of the people we connect with. Ultimately, we’re looking to run the world’s largest photo competition with a touring exhibition that travels through every continent,” Korske said.

Korske believes smartphones haven’t devalued photography, rather they encourage everyone and anyone to tell their story through the photos they take.

“Encouraging people to use what they have to capture better photos is what we want to facilitate, because those memories last a lifetime.”